When I was told this I felt ashamed to think I had taught duplicity to
an innocent. I did not know to what it might lead him.

Stolen fruits may look like they are sweet, but taste them, and they
are bitter. I knew a man who sold shoes in the State of Washington. He
was shrewd and sharp. He learned of an old Englishman who, although
his store was in an out of the way town, did a large business. The
shoeman wrote half a dozen letters to himself care of the old
Englishman, addressing them as "Lord" So and So. When he reached the
town the Englishman most graciously handed him the letters, and to all
questions of the shoeman, who commanded a good British accent,
answered, "Yes, my lord," or "No, my lord."

The shoe man explained that, like the merchant, he had hated to leave
the old country, but that America--sad to state--was a more thrifty
country and he had invested in a large shoe factory in Boston. He said
he was merely out traveling for his health and to look over the
country with a view to placing a traveling salesman on the territory.
The Englishman gave him a large open order, supposing, of course, that
a lord would carry no samples. The old merchant was so tickled at
having a chance to buy from a lord that, notwithstanding his reserve,
he one day told his dry goods man about it. This was shortly before
the goods arrived.

"Why, that fellow," said the dry goods man, "is no more of a lord than
I am. He is not even an Englishman." He did not know that he was
"queering" a bill, for this is one thing that one traveling man will
never deliberately do to another. He knows too well what a battle it
is to win a bill, and he will not knowingly snatch from the victor the
spoils of war.